In Memoriam

Director Mike Nichols Dies at 83

Mike Nichols, celebrated as a director on both stage and screen, died Wednesday at the age of 83, as announced in a statement to The New York Times. One of the few people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards, Nichols’s career spanned 50 years and included some of the best and most beloved plays and films of the 20th century.

Nichols’s first Broadway opening was in 1960, starring in a show alongside his comedic partner Elaine May. His first Tony for directing came in 1964, for Barefoot in the Park; the second came just a year later, for The Odd Couple, and the final came in 2012, for Death of a Salesman. When Nichols began directing films in the mid-1960s, the effect was seismic; he pushed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to tear each other apart on-screen in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, then defined an entire generation with 1967’s The Graduate, for which he won the best-director Oscar.

In Hollywood Nichols worked with virtually every one of the best actors of any of the decades in which he worked, from Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson in 1986’s Heartburn to Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War, his final film. Nichols may have been more of a legend on the stage, but films like The Graduate, The Birdcage, and the HBO adaptation of Angels in America will be watched, and re-watched, by generations who never saw his work on stage.

In the January 2013 issue of Vanity Fair, Nichols re-united with May, who hadn’t given an interview in more than 40 years. Sam Kashner, with some of his questions provided by guest editor Judd Apatow, mostly sat back and watched the two old partners spar back and forth. It was May who asked Nichols the question, “What have you learned, Mike?”

“I’ve learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things,
that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on
the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in
some cases, the good things. For instance, if you grow up odd and—what
is it when you’re left out? You’re not an extrovert—”

“Introvert?”

“No, when you grow up—”

“Peculiar?”

“Peculiar. Different,” Mike continued. “The degree to which you’re
peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear
people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is
their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity? If
you survive, because you’ve gotten lucky—and there’s no other reason
ever to survive except luck—you will find that the ability to hear
people thinking is incredibly useful, especially in the theater.”

Nichols's death was announced by ABC News president James Goldston. Nichols is survived by his wife, longtime ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer.